Wednesday, July 30, 2008

I will tell you what Pierre-Hugues told me after his first child died, after his second child died: "Hug and kiss your children tonight, because it might be the last time."

Wise words from a wise man:

Quebec man to be charged after his son's 17-year-old girlfriend found dead

July 30, 2008 - 17:45By: Nelson Wyatt, THE CANADIAN PRESS

MONTREAL - A search for a missing 17-year-old girl turned into a homicide investigation Wednesday after Quebec provincial police found her body in a wooded area.

The father of the girl's boyfriend is to be arraigned in Sorel on Thursday in her death but the exact charges have not yet been determined by the Crown, said Sgt. Marc Butz.

Melissa Beaudin of Montreal vanished early Wednesday morning, prompting the police dragnet in the tiny farming community of Yamaska, 100 kilometres northeast of Montreal.

After hours of intense police activity, a coroner's van was seen entering the search perimeter set up by police as canine units recruited to aid the investigation pulled out.

"We found the body of the adolescent in question," said a grim-faced Sgt. Joyce Kemp as she emerged from the cordon to address reporters.

"The scene is protected now and there is a lot of work for the investigators to do. It was a violent death and there will be an autopsy on the body."

The case, which dominated all-news channels in Quebec, came on the eve of the first-year anniversary of the disappearance of Cedrika Provencher.

The 10-year-old girl vanished from nearby Trois-Rivieres last July 31 after she told someone she was helping a man look for a dog. The massive search for her grabbed headlines nationwide but she has never been found.

Kemp would not comment on how Beaudin might have died, saying that would be determined by the autopsy.

"I can say the death was not through the use of a gun or a knife," Kemp said. She also said it was too early to say if Beaudin had been sexually assaulted.

The discovery of the body came shortly after police released a photo of the missing girl, who had long dark hair and piercings in her left ear.

Police had been tight-lipped about the case but by early afternoon were interviewing one man, had impounded a small grey car for forensic analysis and set up a perimeter around a local house.

Kemp said the son of the 44-year-old accused was also interviewed.

The father was stopped by police in his car shortly after the alert went out for the missing girl.

"The information that we received around 2 a.m. was to the effect that the young girl was seen for the last time with the father of her boyfriend," Kemp said. "Using the description of (his) car, police were able to locate and intercept him."

"The mother alerted the police that her daughter was missing."

Soon after, police called in search dogs and requested the help of a helicopter at daylight.

The search was complicated by the fact the rural community is surrounded by thick woods and large fields.

About 90 minutes after the alert went out for the girl, police intercepted the grey car belonging to the boyfriend's father on a road in the community. It sat for several hours at the side of the road, its driver's door open, with cruisers parked beside and behind it with their emergency lights flashing.

The car was put on a flatbed tow truck and taken away to be scoured by crime scene investigators.

Curious townsfolk came to watch the police operation from the edges of the perimeter and many expressed shock that such an event had happened in their normally peaceful village.

2. Bones were found - not by the police - in someone's backyard; police didn't crack anything.

Police crack Matane cold case

Relatives of man who disappeared in 1999 arrested in connection with his murder

The GazettePublished: Thursday, July 10

MONTREAL - Provincial and Rimouski police think that they have cracked a cold case dating back to 1999.

This morning, three people were arrested in connection with the death of St. René de Matane man Michel Dugas, who was reported missing nine years ago. He was 50 years old at the time.On June 18 1999, Dugas' car was found in the Matane River. Inside the car were his wallet and dentures. But, after searching the river and the surrounding area, police were unable to find his body, said Sûreté du Québec Constable Claude Ross.

A little over ten days ago however, the bones of a man believed to be the remains of Dugas were found in a yard in St. René de Matane in the Lower St. Lawrence.

Although Dugas' case was considered a disappearance in 1999, evidence collected after the fact pointed to foul play, Ross added.

A 53-year-old woman and two 33-year-old men were arrested and will be appear in court in Rimouski tomorrow morning to face charges of murder, obstruction of justice and being an accomplice to a murder, Ross said. Two of the suspects are part of Dugas' immediate family and one is a friend, he added.

At the time of his disappearance, Dugas was married and had a stepson.

Sunday, July 20, 2008

The ArtsCenter's seventh annual 10 by 10 in the Triangle festival is "the year of high-risk behavior," according to the program notes.

The first half of 10 by 10 is the more predictable, other plays in this half deal with similar issues, such as an employee and human resources manager discovering common ground (Exit Interview) or a prospective stepmother and stepdaughter scoping each other out at a ball game (Hard Ball).

The second half veers into more unpredictable territory, starting with David Guaspari's Speed Mating, an endearingly goofy bit about insect mating rituals. Several performers stand out in multiple plays, notably veteran writer and performer John Boni, who does some soulful, restrained work in Canyon's Edge, Off to Summer and Messages Deleted, the last of which is the only play not to contain comic elements. Barbette Hunter and Rob Jenkins also do consistently energetic and thoughtful work, often rising above the scripts' more predictable twists, and John Allore also stands out as a stroke-afflicted writer in Struck by J and a man narrating his dysfunctional past in Dead Cat.

The more offbeat plays are the most enjoyable, but the energy level stays high throughout the entire show. Besides, knowing that each play only lasts 10 minutes means that if you don't enjoy one, you can take comfort in the fact that it'll soon be over.

The words written by the daughter of a Maine murder victim resonated with me. I suspect that many volunteers involved in the cold case of Theresa Allore share Myava Escamilla’s feelings. (See text I’ve placed in blue below.)

Congratulations to the Portland Police Department for getting a grand jury indictment in this 22-year-old cold case. Thank you to Myava for giving a voice to “this community affected by violence”.

New Hampshire man charged with 1986 murder

July 17, 2008Kevin BurnhamBoothbay RegisterEditorThe last man to see Mary Kelley alive in 1986 has been charged with her murder. Roger R. Bernier, who was living in Manchester at the time of the arrest on Friday,July 11, was scheduled to be charge with Kelley's death on Wednesday, July 16 inPortland.

Kelley, who lived in Boothbay Harbor with her mother, Hazel Kelley, now deceased, and her daughter, Myava Escamilla, was found strangled in her Portland apartment in 1986. Kelley commuted to Portland during the week to work as a veterinarian's assistant and came home to Boothbay Harbor on the weekends.

In 2005, Escamilla, who graduated from Boothbay Region High School in 1995, returned to Maine from her home in California to offer a $5,000 reward for any information leading to a conviction in her mother's unsolved murder. The reward, offered through the Carol Sund/Carrington Memorial Reward Foundation, expired after six months after no information came forward.

Escamilla, who was seven at the time of her mother's murder, learned of Friday's arrest over the weekend, according to family friend, Chip Griffin. According to a Portland Press Herald report on the arrest, on Monday, she sent a bouquet of white roses to the lead Portland detective on the case, Karl Rybeck.

In an e-mail correspondence with Escamilla Tuesday night, she had this to say: "I am blessed and grateful for the recent grand jury indictment and arrest of Roger Bernier, who murdered my mother Mary Kelley over 22 years ago. I am incredibly grateful to the work of the Portland Police Dept., especially Detectives Karl Rybeck, Joe Fagone and Mark Gibbons and Evidence Technician John Halpin and the Carol Sund Carrington Foundation. I have seen many detectives come and go on this case, and if it were not for the efforts of Detective Rybeck and his team, I do not believe this event would have happened.

"I do not know what will happen from this point, but I hope that the District Attorney will proceed to trial on murder charges and not accept a plea bargain. However, most importantly, I will have the opportunity to look Mr. Bernier in his face and tell him, the judge and/or jury the effects that violence has on a person, a family and a community. I stand not only for myself, but for my mother herself, and for my grandmother who did not have the opportunity to see this come to a conclusion.

For all those who still hold out for justice for their loved ones, especially those living with cold cases, please consider this a victory for you too. Just as your loss is our loss, this victory is yours, too. I dedicate this to you and extend my support. Once one enters this community affected by violence, one does not leave and I shall not forget you, your loved ones or your continued struggle as mine comes to an end.

"The only other comment that I can think to include at this time is regarding the references in various media to Mom's alleged substance abuse and/or mental health issues. This is untrue and irrelevant. It clouds the issue -- that she was taking a bath in her own home and was brutally murdered.

"Every three years we conduct surveys on topics we feel are important," says Denis Desroches, assistant chief of strategic management for the Montreal police department. "We ask if people think they're seeing enough police in their neighbourhoods and whether they feel safe in their city.

"And what we see is that even though crime has dropped by 42 per cent in Montreal over the past 15 years, the public's feeling of security has not evolved.

"Simply put, there's less and less crime, but people are just as scared as they ever were. It means we have to work on people's perceptions as much as we do on the reality. It's good that we're doing a good job. But if people don't know it ... we have to do more to make ourselves visible.

As Desroches speaks, crime statistics compiled by Statistics Canada are being broadcast, blogged and written about from coast to coast.

Just as it did in 2006, the nation's crime rate dropped in 2007, the rate of some categories of crime hitting lows not known for 30 years and Quebec and Montreal appearing - statistically, at least - as among the safest places you'll find in Canada.

The StatsCan findings echo those compiled by Desroches's force, which found that crime on the island of Montreal dropped last year by 8.3 per cent.

But Montreal's statistics are based on a comparison between real numbers from one year to the next - 42 homicides committed in 2007 measured against 43 in 2006 equals a drop of 2.3 per cent.

However, the ebb and flow of national crime statistics isn't based on a variation in the real number of offences committed but on changes to the crime rate - the ratio of crimes committed per 100,000 residents.

Thus, the greater Toronto area, population 5.1 million, recorded a total of 111 homicides last year and was the nation's murder capital. However, even those 12 bloody months raised the area's murder rate to only two per 100,000 residents. Saskatoon, meanwhile, with a population of about 234,000 and nine homicides committed in 2007, was found to have a murder rate of about 3.6.

Things also become complicated when a decrease in a crime rate could be mistaken for an actual drop in crime. For example, last year, the auto theft rate in Quebec was established at 470 per 100,000 residents, a drop of 6.8 per cent compared with the rate for 2006. However, that decrease doesn't change the fact that last year there were 36,216 cars stolen in this province, ensuring Quebec maintained its place as a national leader when it came to the theft of motor vehicles.

Desroches appreciates the use of crime rates when it comes to assessing a police force's efficiency. "It's good to be able to use that comparison internally to measure how other police departments are doing," he says.

But he adds that there is a certain amount of comparison between apples and oranges when murder rates logged in big cities are compared on the same page with those of smaller - much smaller - towns.

"I think a city like Saskatoon should be compared with Laval, Sherbrooke or Gatineau," he said.

But no matter how the numbers are compiled, it seems the biggest challenge facing Montreal police is proving to residents that they're safer than they think.

But is part of that problem of perception based on how the news media report crime?

The media is simply feeding a need on the part of the public," he says. "But media can make an event and create the impression it's bigger than it is.

"A murder in the métro can be talked about for weeks, even though (hundreds of thousands) people a day use the system and an event like that is rare.

"Look at home invasions - their rate of occurrence has nothing to do with their rate of being reported in the media."

Then there's the apparent contradiction discovered by police surveys over where people feel they're safe.

"They always feel safer in their own neighbourhood," Desroches says. "Even if it's a neighbourhood where there's crime, they feel safer there than 'in the city.' But there's a joke we like to tell when people say they're worried about going downtown. It's a fact that most homicide victims are murdered by friends or relations - people they know.

"So when someone says they're worried about being in a crowd, we tell them to go out and meet strangers - they're a lot safer."

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

British Ethics Professor Says New Test Can Determine Your 'Moral DNA'Times of London

A British professor has designed a test he claims can help gauge a person's "moral DNA," reports the Times of London.

Roger Steare, professor of Organizational Ethics at Cass Business School, says his test is based on five years of research and classifies ethical decision making into three basic moral philosophies: principle conscience, social conscience, and rules compliance.

Steare says that while there are clear lines of cleavage among moral philosophies based on age, gender, education, and politics, there is "also a common threat that unites almost all humanity."

The Times offers the test online, with results viewable afterwards. The Times will collect aggregate data and publish wide-scale results in the fall.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Jeff Carstensen was spooked when he learned his grandmother planned to buy him a $100,000 life insurance policy – and name herself the beneficiary.

"She told me that people of our stature have insurance policies on each other," he said. "That way, if something happens to you, you take care of me, and if something happens to me, I take care of you. It was all too suspicious. So I got out of there any way I could, as soon as I could."As he and everyone else who came into Betty Neumar's orbit have learned, he apparently had good reason.

The 76-year-old Georgia woman sits in a North Carolina jail, accused of hiring a hit man to kill fourth husband Harold Gentry. Authorities are re-examining the deaths of her first child and four of the five men she married, including Gentry.

No motive has been discussed, but records and interviews with relatives and police officials paint Neumar as a domineering matriarch consumed by money.

Said Al Gentry, who pressed North Carolina authorities for 22 years to reopen their investigation of his brother's death: "You can't trust her. You can't believe a word she says."She collected at least $20,000 in 1986 when Harold Gentry was shot to death in his home. A year earlier, she had collected $10,000 in life insurance when her son died.

She also had a life insurance policy on husband No. 5, John Neumar, who died in October. The official cause of death was listed as sepsis, but authorities are investigating whether he was poisoned.

Betty Neumar is being held in a North Carolina jail on $500,000 bond, and is scheduled to appear in court Monday. Her attorney has declined requests for comment.

To the outside world, family members said, she was Bee – a friendly woman who operated beauty shops, attended church and raised money for charity.

But Carstensen saw another side: fist fights at family functions, use of obscenities and belittling of relatives, how she would act "one way in public – especially church – and another behind closed doors."

Police in Ohio are looking into the death of Carstensen's stepfather, Neumar's son Gary Flynn, who was found shot to death in his apartment in November 1985. It was ruled a suicide, but his family has questions. A decision on whether to formally reopen the case is pending.

Law enforcement authorities told The Associated Press they have struggled to piece together details of Betty Neumar's life because her story keeps changing. But interviews, documents and court records provide an outline of her history in North Carolina, Ohio, Florida and Georgia, the states where she was married.

She was born Betty Johnson in 1931 in Ironton, a hardscrabble southeastern Ohio town along the West Virginia border. She graduated from high school in 1949 and married Clarence Malone in November 1950. She was 18, he was 19.

In December 1951, she claimed in court papers that Malone abused her. It's unclear what happened to that complaint or when the marriage broke up. Their son, Gary, was born March 13, 1952.

Malone remarried twice. He was shot once in the back of the head outside his auto shop in a small town southwest of Cleveland in November 1970. His death was ruled a homicide, although police said there were no signs of robbery.

Gary was eventually adopted by Betty Neumar's second husband, James A. Flynn, although it's unclear when she met or married him. She told investigators that he "died on a pier" somewhere in New York in the mid-1950s. She and Flynn had a daughter, Peggy, and his death is the only one officials are not reinvestigating.

Records from Florida show she was living in Jacksonville when she enrolled in beauty college in 1960 under the name Betty Flynn. At some point, she met her third husband, Richard Sills, who was found dead in his apartment in the Florida Keys in 1965.

Neumar told police they were alone in a room arguing when he pulled out a gun and shot himself. Authorities who ruled it a suicide are now reinvestigating.

Three years later, Neumar married Gentry. Five years after he died, she married John Neumar.It was while living with him in Augusta, Ga., in the mid-1990s that, former friends and family members said, she persuaded more than 200 people to invest in a get-rich-quick scheme.She told them they would receive up to $100,000 for every $100 they put toward the legal expenses of a rich European family that had died with no heirs.

Word spread, and people brought money to her beauty shop near Belvedere, S.C., near the Georgia border. Her husband's son, John K. Neumar, invested $1,000.

Months later, more than 200 antsy investors met with Betty Neumar at the Augusta Civic Center. She said lawyers in Europe needed more time and their money was safe. It wasn't true. Seven ringleaders in the scam pleaded guilty in 1997, but Neumar was never charged.

"We were rather stupid. I know," said Mary Miller, an investor who lost $500. "But we believed her. We trusted her."

It appears they weren't the only ones.

John Neumar was worth more than $300,000 when he and Betty married in 1991. But nearly 10 years later, they filed for bankruptcy and listed more than $206,000 in debts on 43 credit cards. It's unclear where the money went.

"Before he met her, he always saved his money," said John K. Neumar. "That's what he taught us. So it was a big surprise when I found out he was having financial trouble. It wasn't like he bought anything. She just took all his money."

Saturday, July 12, 2008

New leads emerge after B.C. police reveal shoes that held severed feet

ANNA MEHLER PAPERNYJuly 12, 2008

VANCOUVER -- The RCMP are following three new missing-persons files they hope are connected with the five feet that have washed up off the southern coast of British Columbia in the past year.

Five calls came in to the RCMP's information line after the police revealed the brands and size of the shoes the feet were clad in, said RCMP Sergeant Tim Shields. Two of the calls were hang-ups and three look like legitimate leads. "They're being taken seriously, they appear legitimate and we're following up as quickly as we can," he said. "They all related to missing people - [the callers were] people who believed they had further information based on the shoes."

Sgt. Shields said police have been in contact with the shoes' manufacturers - Nike, New Balance, Reebok and Campus - so they can establish a time frame as to when the shoe's owner could have gone missing.

Investigators are not trying to find what stores sold the shoes and to whom, which Sgt. Shields said would be "extremely difficult."

Nike Canada spokeswoman Jane Shaw said the RCMP contacted the company recently for information regarding the two matching size 11 Nike shoes - one found on Valdes Island on Feb. 2, the other on Kirkland Island on June 16. Police said DNA analyses showed the pair came from the same man.

Ms. Shaw said she couldn't say when police contacted them, but it may have been as recently as this week. Nike shoes have information on them that would indicate where and when the shoe was made and possibly where it was sold.

New Balance spokeswoman Amy Vreeland said the RCMP have run a check on the model number for the New Balance shoe found on Kirkland Island May 22 - the only one of the five belonging to a woman.

Connecting the feet to a missing-person file is investigators' best bet; coroners' and forensic anthropologists' investigations of the feet have yielded little information aside from DNA samples and the victims' sex.

Mark Skinner, a forensic anthropologist from Simon Fraser University, said it's possible to determine a person's age, height, origin, occupation and even diet from the bones and nails of their feet, but so far analysts have not succeeded. He said the rash of washed-up feet on B.C. shores - and a shoe-clad foot found on a beach in Tylosand, Sweden, on Tuesday - is forcing forensic anthropologists to rethink their field.

"These standards are better developed for other parts of the body than the feet," Prof. Skinner said. "This find of five feet is something we really, I think, should have anticipated but haven't adequately, and we're going to have to respond better to it."

He thinks feet will continue to wash up because more people wear sneakers made of rubber or other floating material. "There is this natural phenomenon of wearing footwear that floats," he said.

Too BizarreBeached feet mystery unique to B.C.Lori Culbert, Vancouver SunPublished: Friday, June 20, 2008The mysterious story of feet washing ashore along B.C.'s south coast has captured the fascination of people around the world -- likely because the mystery doesn't appear to be happening anywhere else."I think our experience of cases like this is pretty much nil," said former Vancouver police geographic profiler Kim Rossmo, now a Texas State University professor."On one international listserve I'm on, no one seems to have ever heard of something like this."Five feet clad in running shoes have been found on islands in the Georgia Strait and the mouth of the Fraser River over the past 10 months.Police and the coroner say there is no evidence yet that the feet are connected in any way, or that any foul play was involved.

But Rossmo argues five feet makes things pretty suspicious.

"I think we're way beyond the coincidence level, but the question is whether it is foul play? Is it a serial killer? Is it a joke? Is it from an accident?"

Rossmo, whose expertise is pinpointing where a suspect lives or operates based on the location of crimes, said it would be challenging to determine where these bodies originated due to variables such as ocean currents, temperatures, and when they entered the water.

The story has all the twists and turns of a crime-scene thriller.

No one knows that better than Jay Clarke, a Vancouver lawyer who is also a successful novelist who goes by the pen name Michael Slade.

If the theory is that feet are surfacing now because running shoes are more buoyant, he asks why that phenomenon isn't happening in other parts of the world.

And if this is merely the work of a prankster, where are the feet coming from?

"Surely there's a pretty tight record of cadavers in medical school and bodies in funeral homes?" asked Slade, whose 2001 novel Death's Door is about mutilated bodies found on the shores of B.C. islands.

"Am I saying that there is a serial killer on the loose? I certainly can't go that far. But you can bet that it is one of the cards that must be put down on the table."

But RCMP Const. Annie Linteau said the province's specialized homicide squad, IHIT, is not investigating the feet.

"We don't know what it is we're dealing with. Until these remains are identified we don't know if we're dealing with a suicide or someone who fell in the water or foul play," she said.

None of the five feet has so far been identified by DNA.

The RCMP has refused to release photos of the shoes, or information about their make or size, which could help people identify missing loved ones.

Police are, however, asking the public to call CrimeStoppers if they have any tips.The five feet were found on Jedediah Island (Aug. 20), Gabriola Island (Aug. 26), Valdes Island (Feb. 8), Kirkland Island (May 22) and Westham Island (June 16).The bizarre story has made headlines around the world and generated multiple theories about where the feet came from.

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Sunday, July 06, 2008

Big man, Pig man, ha ha charade you are...

I have today discovered a gem; Marc Denis' CKGM Super 70s Tribute Page. If you were a kid growing up in Montreal's West Island you lived for FM radio and all the opportunities CKGM offered. I recently discovered a CKGM weekly ratings postcard of top hits and albums for November 1, 1971 in Theresa's things, here are some of Ron Legge's picks:

Teaser and the Firecat - Cat Stevens

Every Picture Tells a Story - Rod Stewart

Hot Pants - James Brown

200 Motels - Frank Zappa

This was Theresa's world. Check out Marc's description on 1977:

... a particularly memorable 12 months of concerts and record crowds in Montréal as 98 CKGM presents (or welcomes) the hottest acts of the day at the Forum: Queen (January 26), Peter Gabriel (March 23), the Eagles (March 29), Al Stewart (April 16), Peter Frampton (August 16), Rod Stewart (October 10) and Montréal's own Gino Vannelli (November 25). The post-summer games Big O is now also a newly-christened concert venue as CKGM presents Emerson, Lake and Palmer there in front of 78,800 fans on August 26. This mega ELP concert evening comes straight on the heels of the 80,000-patron Pink Floyd extravaganza at Olympic Stadium only a few weeks earlier (July 6).

I can tell you she attended at least 4, maybe 5 of these shows - Frampton, Stewart, ELP, Floyd and maybe Al Stewart. Frampton I believe was at Man And His World, and Terry Roth drove Theresa and a bunch of her friends there. ELP and Pink Floyd were monster, legendary shows at the Olympic Stadium.

In fact, I only just yesterday unpacked this poster I've been carrying in a tube for five years and framed it on my wall. As fate would have it Terry contacted me yesterday and demanded that I blare Welcome To The Machine at full decibels, it was one of Theresa's favorites.

About the Pig: I especially like in Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men how the cultural minister has rescued rare examples of prized art including Pink Floyd's pig.

Here's a kicker. When The Wall was released in late 1979 Theresa was by then dead. The first person in our house to buy the latest Pink Floyd album was not me, but my father. For a number of years he became a real fan (or maybe he was just carrying the flag for her), and he had 8-tracks of all of their stuff in his car.